The United States is now the epicenter of a shifting global pandemic. With more than 82,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, it has surpassed China, Spain and Italy, the hardest-hit countries to date. Note: those nations have still recorded more deaths. The grim milestone comes as US officials reported a record number of fatalities in a single day.

So how did America get here? A series of missteps, and missed opportunities: a failure to take the virus seriously even as it brought China to its knees, a fumbled federal government response to testing that left the US in the dark about the magnitude of the outbreak, and a desperate shortage of masks, personal protective equipment and ventilators that has put both medical workers and patients at risk.

But even as the US scrambles to cope with the widening crisis, and overstretched doctors turn to increasingly extreme measures to deal with gruesome conditions, the US President is still touting a tale of great success — hailing a far lower mortality rate than he had expected, on what was the country’s deadliest day.

The US, Europe, Japan, China and India are unleashing trillions of dollars in government spending and newly created money as they desperately try to keep the global economy from sinking into depression, Julia Horowitz reports. The bill for saving the world economy so far: $7 trillion (and rising). The total spans government spending, loan guarantees and tax breaks, as well as money printing by central banks to buy assets such as bonds and stock funds.

“I want people to see this and understand what this can do,” said Dr. Keith Mortman, the chief of thoracic surgery at George Washington University Hospital, which has released 3D video of a coronavirus patient’s lungs. The 360VR scan shows the rapid spread of the infection and inflammation to both lungs of a 59-year-old man, causing the patient to gasp for air. Just days before, he was asymptomatic.

Why is the death rate so low in Germany? How come the UK has comparatively fewer cases than elsewhere? And what’s going on in Russia? Questions once reserved for epidemiologists are now being discussed over dinner tables and around (virtual) water coolers across the world, Ivana Kottasová reports.

For people comparing the data and trying to calculate how different countries’ epidemics stack up against each other, experts have a warning: nations have varying reporting standards, as well as approaches to testing and tracing cases, all of which makes such comparisons dangerously misleading.

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